Darkover Landfall by Marion Zimmer Bradley

He supposed it was only fair to give everyone a chance at the mountains, and certainly the slidewalks and lifts installed to the top of Mount Rainier and Everest and Mount Whitney had made it easier for old women and children to get up there and have a chance to see the scenery. But still, MacAran thought longingly, to climb an actual wild mountain–one with no slidewalks and not even a single chairlift! He’d climbed on Earth, but you felt silly struggling up a rock cliff when teen-agers were soaring past you in chairlifts on their effortless way to the top and giggling at the anachronist who wanted to do it the hard way!

Some of the nearer slopes were blackened with the scars of old forest fires, and he estimated that the clearing where the ship lay was second-growth from some such fire a few years before. Lucky the ship’s fire-prevention systems had prevented any fire on impact-­otherwise if anyone had escaped alive, it might have been quite literally from a frying pan into a raging forest fire. They’d have to be careful in the woods. Earth people had lost their old woodcraft habits and might not be aware any more of what forest fires could do. He made a mental note of it for his report.

As he re-entered the area of the crash, his brief euphoria vanished. Inside the field hospital, through the semi-transparent plastic of the shelter material, he could see rows and rows of unconscious or semiconscious bodies. A group of men were trimming breaches from tree trunks and another small group was raising a dymaxion dome–the kind, based on triangular bracings, which could be built in half a day. He began to wonder what the report of the Engineering crew had been. He could see a crew of machinists crawling around on the crumpled bracings of the starship but it didn’t look as if much had been accomplished. In fact, it didn’t look hopeful for getting away very soon.

As he passed the hospital, a young man in a stained and crumpled Medic uniform came out and called.

“Rafe! The Mate said report to the First Dome as soon as you get back–there’s a meeting there and they want you. I’m going over there myself for a Medic report –I’m the most senior man they can spare.” He moved slowly beside MacAran. He was slight and small, with light-brown hair and a small curly brown beard, and he looked weary, as if he had had no sleep. MacAran asked, hesitatingly, “How are things going in the hospital?”

“Well, no more deaths since midnight, and we’ve taken four more people off critical. There evidently wasn’t a leak in the atomics after all–that girl from Comm checked out with no radiation burns; the vomiting was evidently just a bad blow in the solar plexus. Thank God for small favors–if the atomics had sprung a leak, we’d probably all be dead, and another planet contaminated.”

Yeah, the M-AM drives have saved a lot of lives,­” MacAran said. “You look awfully tired, Ewen–have you had any sleep at all?”

Ewen Ross shook his head. “No, but the Old Maws been generous with wakers, and I’m still racing my motors. About midafternoon I’m probably going to crash and I won’t wake up for three days, but until then I’m holding on.” He hesitated, looked shyly at his friend and said, “I heard about Jenny, Rafe. Tough luck. So many of the girls back in that area made it out, I was sure she was okay.”

“So was I.’ MacAran drew a deep breath and felt the clean air like a great weight on his chest. “I haven’t seen Heather–is she–”

“Heather’s okay; they drafted her for nursing duty. Not a scratch on her. I understand after this meeting they’re going to post completed lists of the dead, the wounded and the survivors. What were you doing, anyway? Del Rey told me you’d been sent out, but I didn’t know what for.”

“Preliminary surveying,” MacAran said. “We have no idea of our latitude, no idea of the planet’s size or mass, no idea about climate or seasons or what have you. But I’ve established that we can’t be too far off the equator, and–well I’ll be making the report inside. Do we go right in?”

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